


geological time

by seinmit



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Bad Guys Made Them Do It, Bottom Bucky Barnes, Dissociation, Fuck Or Die, HYDRA Trash Party, Heavy Angst, M/M, Past Brainwashing, Past Rape/Non-con, Post-Black Panther (2018), Raped during rape recovery, Self-Sacrifice, Some Victim-Blaming/Self-Blame on Bucky's Part, Top Steve Rogers, Torture, Trauma, Trying to Comfort One Another, Unaroused Victim, shock collar
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-11
Updated: 2020-01-11
Packaged: 2021-02-27 13:53:53
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,242
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22208200
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seinmit/pseuds/seinmit
Summary: “They would grow up grappling with ways of living with what happened. They would try to tell themselves that in terms of geological time it was an insignificant event. Just a blink of the Earth Woman's eye. That Worse Things had happened. That Worse Things kept happening. But they would find no comfort in the thought.”- Arundhati Roy, fromThe God of Small ThingsBucky knows that HYDRA doesn't need a reason to make Steve rape him.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Comments: 6
Kudos: 147
Collections: Hydra Holiday Trash Party Gift Exchange 2019





	geological time

**Author's Note:**

  * For [glorious_spoon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/glorious_spoon/gifts).



Bucky wakes to the sound of Steve saying his name and, god help him, it makes him wake up with a smile. 

"'s been a while," he says, reaching out with a hand—but his arm jerks hard against the manacles chaining him up, and he feels the ache of it all the way down his body, throbbing underneath his skin. His eyes snap open, and he tests the bonds again, more deliberately, but they don't budge. 

The room is bare and simple. Three concrete walls, one with a heavy iron door. The fourth wall is dark, gleaming glass—a one-way mirror, certainly. They have observers. It's very familiar—not quite from memories, but he's had these nightmares any number of times. 

Steve is about four feet away from him, barefoot, no shield. He's in the leggings of his stealth-suit and the black cotton shirt he wears underneath the top. He has a nasty shiner, but it is healing an ugly yellow-purple. 

"Huh," Bucky says. 

His shoulder is killing him, supporting too much of his weight, and even when he tries to shift, it doesn't help—they have him up too high, he can only reach the ground with the balls of his feet and not his heels. 

"What's the last thing you remember?" Steve says. Now that Bucky is fully awake, Steve gets closer, more fully into his space. They've learned the hard way that Bucky doesn't do well when woken up with a body right next to him, and of course, Steve would hold to that even now. 

"I texted you goodnight and fell asleep early," he says. "I was in Wakanda." 

That in itself sends alarm bells rattling around his skull—it's even more horrifying than the rest of it, that they apparently got to him in Wakanda, that he brought whoever-this-was to that sanctuary. He firmly and methodically pushes that thought away, focusing his attention on the twinges in his body. He needs to stay in the present, that's the key to surviving this. 

Steve's face is too-even, too-careful. "That was three days ago."

"Huh," Bucky says, again. 

He evaluates his own body more thoroughly. He's sore and full of aches, a throbbing low-level pain sinking right down to his bones. There's a heavy metal weight around his throat, and even if he needs to take account, his mind shies away from considering what must be a collar too closely. His head feels muzzy and full of cotton. Drugs, then. Must be. And that narrows down the possible list of culprits sharply. If they had the right drugs to keep _him_ under, for that long, without accidentally killing him—

"Must be HYDRA, then," Bucky says, a little wry. 

Steve's eyes search his face, considering. "You're taking this well."

"Practice," Bucky says, and he knows it's unfair to Steve, but he can't help that some of his amusement leaks on to his face. Steve looks gutted, of course, and Bucky feels bad. 

"Steve—" he starts, but he's interrupted by a crackle and a voice speaking through a speaker in the corner. He looks at it and sees the blinking red of a recording device. Apparently, the intended audience for this is more extensive than whoever is in the next room. 

"Welcome home, soldier," someone says, and the voice isn't at all familiar. Generic accent—either American or doing a good job pretending. Could be anyone, really. The Asset had been terrible with names. 

"Your rescue came in half-cocked and got himself captured, imagine that," the voice says. "He never stopped to consider whether or not you were a damsel in distress, or just a particularly juicy bit of bait." 

Steve goes cherry-red and Bucky shifts so he can reach out with one foot, touch Steve's calf. He's trying to be comforting, but Steve flinches. They've been going slow, the two of them, but that's unusual—Steve usually leans into any touch like an overly affectionate cat. It makes Bucky back off, press himself further into the wall. 

"Don't be offended, soldier," the voice says. "Captain America here is very unhappy with his orders." 

Bucky raises his eyebrows at Steve, but Steve isn't looking at him. His face is turned away, and he's staring, fixed, at some point on the concrete.

"I'll let him explain," the voice says. In the background, Bucky can hear the clink of bottles, a burst of laughter, before the transmission cuts out. 

They're left in silence. There's the barely perceptible hum of the recording equipment, their breathing, the hiss of recirculating air. Steve's not moving, not a single muscle. 

Bucky feels panic rising in his chest with incongruous delicacy. The first moment of panic feels fluttery, like the brush of soft things against the inside of his skin, before it builds and builds and clutches his heart, drags him down into the horrible corridors of his own head, leaves him blank-faced and with the quiet, almost-welcome conviction that he's dying. He focuses on keeping his breaths deep and even. He's going to hold it together. 

He waits for Steve to start talking, but there's only silence. After maybe three minutes of quiet, Bucky opens his mouth to prompt him, but Steve cuts him off. 

"They want me to rape you," Steve says, vicious. Bucky pulls his head away from Steve so fast he bangs the back of his skull against the concrete, hard enough that a starburst of light flashes across his vision. 

His mouth is dry, and the panic is no longer lingering in the wings. It has boiled over, rushed the stage, filled the room—any number of stupid little metaphors to try and capture the reality that Bucky himself is just a thin veneer of person over an endless, impossible void of fear. 

He can't help that his breathing picks up, but he tries to keep himself as outwardly calm as possible, Steve needs that from him. 

"Well," Bucky says, finally. "I've been saying I want to try out some new stuff in our relationship." 

Steve chokes, his shoulders twitching so hard that Bucky knows he's repressing a sob. He stumbles forward so he can support himself against the wall—on Bucky's right side, even though Bucky's one arm is useless and chained. He's gotten so good at staying on Bucky's right in the careful months of their courtship. 

"Please don't," Steve says, his voice shaking. "Please—"

"Hey," Bucky says. "Hey, sorry. I won't. I'm sorry, Steve." 

They'd been moving so slowly, enough that sometimes it felt like they were standing still. The whole thing was slow, of course, with an origin dating back to prehistory. The cavemen banging rocks together, and Steve and Bucky refusing to admit they were in love, happening at about the same time in the distant past. At least they could talk about it now. At least they both knew what they were circling around, that when they walk along the hills and valleys of the Wakandan countryside, they were doing so as lovers—maybe not physically, not yet, but in the fullest sense of being in love. 

Bucky had sometimes worried that the glacial pace of their relationship was a problem, that he was unfair to Steve, but sometimes it was Steve pulling them back, keeping them in place. Eventually, he had just let himself indulge in it. They could let the moment linger as long as they wanted, enjoy the adolescent joy of their fingers brushing while reaching for the same object or the way they both tensed with glorious awareness if Steve reached out to push a lock of Bucky's hair out of his face. They have time—or at least, Bucky used to think they did. Seems foolish, now.

It's unfair to bring that joy here. Bucky shouldn't. He won't, for Steve's sake, if nothing else, and he's not even sure it would help him to think about it as part of the same lifetime. 

"Did they say why?" Bucky asks. 

"Do they need a reason?" Steve bites out and Bucky is genuinely a little proud of him. Of course, they don't need a reason—they never did. So much of the suffering they put him through was recklessly pointless.

"What's the plan, Cap?" Bucky asks. He's distancing, already—trying to push away Steve from the body that's next to him, the person that's gonna—

Steve flinches but doesn't ask him to call him anything else. He's silent a long moment, his shoulders heaving. He's obviously trying to get himself into a place where he can do this. 

He reaches out with his hand, rests it lightly on Bucky's bicep. And then, surprising the hell out of Bucky, he almost imperceptibly taps out _delay_ in Morse. That means someone's coming, that Steve didn't actually do this entirely alone. That's fantastic news, genuinely. 

Maybe how he perks up is too visible, though, because, in the next moment, electricity roars through his body. He feels it like a thousand needles, pricking him everywhere from the inside out, forcing his muscles into hard cramps, pulling against his bones. It's pouring out from the back of his neck, shooting down his spine and shocking him enough that he convulses. He can smell burning hair and seared flesh. 

"Less tenderness, please, Captain," the voice says. "We aren't interested in something this PG." 

When Bucky manages to pull his eyes open, Steve is standing in front of him, eyes wide and skin pale. His hands are hovering over Bucky, unwilling to just grab him, but clearly eager to help. 

Bucky grunts acknowledgment, that he's still in his own head, even though he feels the twitchy, nauseating aftershocks of the electricity. They ricochet through his body and his mind. He tries to focus on the pain, because the memories that are recalled by electric shock are more difficult to bear. 

He opens his mouth to speak, but his mouth is too dry. He coughs and licks his lips and really has to work at it.

"It's okay, Steve." The best he can manage and his voice sounds like a croak. "You gotta do it." 

Steve closes his eyes and sways, lips pressed together in a grim line. He nods. 

Bucky thinks closing his eyes is a pretty good idea, and he does the same, leaning his head back against the concrete. He slowly and methodically tugs his arm against the manacle holding him down—unsurprisingly, it doesn't budge, and he feels it bite into his skin enough to tear. Okay, he thinks. He just had to make sure. It will be important, later, that he knows he couldn't have gotten free that easily. 

His body jerks when Steve's hands tentatively land on his hips, and Steve pulls them away like he's been stung. Bucky blinks his eyes open, and Steve's looking down at him with something like nausea on his face. 

Bucky just knows that if he was normal, this might not be so bad. Normal people in love fucked and sure, it would suck to have some evil assholes watching in the other room, but it wouldn't be so bad, maybe— 

They shock him again. It shatters him, pushing everything out of his head, leaving him in wet, bleeding pieces of muscle and fat. He maybe passes out or just leave awareness entirely, because there's nothing but blackness. 

He comes back to himself in twitching jerks. Steve is staring at him in horror. 

Bucky smiles. He can taste blood in his mouth, and his tongue is throbbing—he must have bit it. He can imagine it smeared on his teeth. 

"I can do this all day," Bucky says. It's meant as reassurance. Maybe they could stick with this. Bucky has taken pain before. This is inhumanely terrible, but Bucky's not always been human. He can go back to that part of himself that could deal with this indefinitely, swallow up the horror and keep it to himself. He doesn't have to bring Steve in this at all. 

"Bucky," Steve says, sounding wretched. He reaches out for him again, but this time very gently touches his cheek, wipes away some wetness with his thumb. It feels nice. Bucky doesn't want to lose that. 

"Let's not," Bucky says, more and more sure. "Let's just—"

They shock him again, and freedom has made him weak, because he can hear himself screaming, ragged and painful out of his mostly paralyzed body. There's a tremendous sense of pressure in his chest, like the Hulk reached in and grabbed his heart, squeezing hard. He's choking on it, and he feels bile in the back of his throat, gagging around nothing. It hurts, fuck. 

"Not even _his_ heart will be able to take this for long, Captain," the voice says, mildly. "We're well aware that he'll not be an asset for us again. No skin off my nose if we end up letting you watch us rape his dead body, if you're too delicate to do the deed." 

Bucky moans, trying to drown out that voice. He spits blood and shakes. 

"Steve," he says. "Gonna be okay, Steve. 'M tough." 

Again, but this time he blacks out quick. 

Hands on his body, pounding at his chest. He tries to get away, scrambling back, but there's a wall, and he can't get away, he can't, he's trapped—

"Buck." Urgent. "Buck, you're okay, god—that time your heart did stop, I could _feel it_ stop." 

He's still trying to get away, trying to pull himself up with the manacle. Strong hands hold him in place, more effortlessly than usual, and his chest heaves in a silent sob. 

"It's me, Bucky. Bucky, open your eyes—" 

He shakes his head and moans, a ripped-to-pieces howl. He wants to not hear the voice, it's lying. They're saying things he doesn't understand, using a name that he's not allowed to think. 

"Please look at me."

Maybe he should follow orders, and that's an order, if he's heard one—the impulse toward obedience is enough for him to open his eyes, the world swooping and twinging in front of him. Steve. Steve's golden face, right there, wide blue eyes. Familiar, still and suddenly. 

"Steve," he says. He still remembers. This electricity hasn't sent him out of his own head, not yet. 

"I'm gonna do it," Steve says, to his face, meeting his eyes. He would say it to Bucky's face, of course he would—Bucky thinks that before he remembers what Steve is talking about. It makes him shudder, the thought of it, of Steve—but he can tell. Steve means it. He's not going to watch Bucky die in front of him, and Bucky can feel burns growing from the collar. This might kill him, this is bad. 

The least he can do is not fight Steve on this. 

He nods, and he can see some small amount of relief soften Steve's face. He leans in, and maybe he's planning on—Bucky turns his head. 

"No," he says. "Not—" 

Bucky wants to keep kisses out of this. He hopes he'll be able to keep them as a gleaming possibility, something to look forward to. Steve rests his forehead against Bucky's neck, having kept moving in, but he nods once, sharp. He follows orders, too. 

When Steve gently pushes down Bucky's sweatpants, Bucky tries to stay still. He wants to crawl out of his skin, he wants to crawl up the wall. He wants to bite Steve, tear, draw blood. It took him actual decades to learn that fighting wouldn't make it better, and his composure has unraveled since he escaped. He had learned a wrong lesson, the lesson that his body belonged to him, and he should've known better. 

Steve is murmuring sweet things, apologies, words of love, and Bucky wants to scream at him to shut up. He doesn't, though. He bites through his lip to keep the words in, keeps his eyes squeezed shut. He finds himself listening eagerly to his own guttural noises, hoping that the moans and whimpers he hears will drown out Steve's voice. 

He's not wearing anything underneath the sweatpants, which makes his stomach swoop. He'd gone to bed in boxers, he always does, which meant that some unknown person had taken them off. What a stupid thing to get upset about, but he worries the thought, gnawing on it in his brain, trying to analyze his body, trying to figure out if anyone had made him come or penetrated him with anything—it's better to think about that than the sound of Steve spitting, sucking on his own fingers. Trying to get them wet. 

He can hear Steve's voice quivering, even as he's still talking. He knows he's going to be touched, knows that it is soon—he shakes, he can't help it, but he forces words out of his own throat. 

"It's okay," he says when he flinches away from Steve's big hand sliding up his thigh. This is a lie, and they both know it, but Bucky hopes that Steve hears the prayer in it. 

"I love you," Bucky says, and that's truth, the only one he can hold on to. 

Steve makes a gut-punch type of sound, and he pauses, his hand hesitating, not fully between Bucky's thighs. Bucky can feel that tears are running down his cheeks, and he hates it—he wishes they'd dived into this faster, that he hadn't been softened up so thoroughly by the pain and shock, the memories of voltage chasing him away from himself. If he had more control, he could have made this easier on them both. 

"Turn me around," he manages, after gulping at air like a dying fish. "Let me face the wall. It'll be easier." 

If Steve doesn't have to see, if Bucky doesn't have to think about controlling the look on his face—Bucky is going to get them through this, he swears it. He's managed to make it through worse, and it is only his famously terrible memory that makes this feel like the end of the world. 

Steve doesn't argue. His hands are gentle as he shifts Bucky's position. He takes off his shirt and puts it between Bucky's cheek and the cold concrete. Bucky is torn about the consideration—on the one hand, the sweetness stings, on the other, now his nose is filled inexorably with Steve's scent. He's swimming in it, it's unavoidable; he won't be able to pretend it is anyone else. 

He pushes his face into it, too eager for comfort to resist. It smells like clean sweat and the deodorant Steve prefers, and he can imagine lying next to each other on the bedroll he used in the goatherder's hut. He thinks of the fizzy, adolescent awareness of Steve's body, not touching him but pulling him in with a gravity, the giddy knowledge of one another as people and as bodies. He thinks of the even rhythm of Steve's breathing and of shifting his own position so he could study Steve's face, let his eyes take their fill of the curve of his lips and his impossibly long eyelashes. They'd been going so slow, but sweet, a molasses kinda love. 

He thinks of that, instead of the fingers pushing against his hole, trying to pry him open. He tries to let the sweetness sink into his muscles, push out the pain of the shock and the fear, let himself relax. He takes huffing, deep breaths of Steve's scent—he's not being hurt, even though it hurts. He's not being raped, even though he doesn't want it. This is them suffering together, and Bucky is gonna be okay. People are coming. He will live past this. 

The air around him seems to congeal and thicken. His body starts moving so slow as to be imperceptible, and he feels it from a distance. When the speaker sputters back into sound, he closes his eyes and focuses on his breathing. 

He hears what's being said, but vaguely, like the tuner of the radio is between channels. 

"—a move on, Captain—"

"It's okay, Steve," Bucky whispers, and it is more true. "C'mon. Do it, please." 

They're gonna get through this. He hears the sound of flesh against flesh. Steve trying to get himself hard, probably—he remembers, with a vividness that pushes this strange present right out of his mind, how easily Steve got hard during the war and how little the tights left to the imagination. Bucky teased him, relentlessly, flicking things into Steve's lap and making him flinch, making him blush, drawing attention to Steve's discomfort—it happened in the most ridiculous of circumstances. Leaning together in the cold, being carried because he was injured, because he was drunk, because he was bleeding out. He remembers the searing fascination that Steve's body had for him, the way he'd stare and have to come up with bullshit to make that normal, to make that something a brother might do. It never had been. He wonders if Steve realizes yet, the hunger that teasing had been clumsily trying to conceal. 

Good thing, he thinks. A normal man probably wouldn't be able to get himself hard. But Steve's only ever needed a stiff breeze, and he manages it. Bucky's grateful. He wants to ask what Steve is thinking about, to get himself there—but he doesn't do that to Steve, won't make him say that. 

He feels the blunt head of Steve's dick push against his entrance. He tenses, hard, and then forces himself slack, to relax as much as he can. It hurts, anyway, when Steve pushes his way in. 

"Sorry," he hears, behind him. "I'm so sorry." 

"You're okay," Bucky says. "It's gonna be okay." 

He feels Steve push his face into Bucky's hair, and he wonders if Steve can smell the sharp herbal conditioner that he always uses. Bucky hopes he can—smells are one of the hardest things to shake, and maybe Steve can join him in that bedroll thousands of miles away, safe and together and feeling each other's bodies from a distance. 

It hurts. He can feel the strain of it, the ache at the base of his back. The pain isn't so bad, though—it's nothing compared to the electric shock, and he's undoubtedly been fucked more brutally than this. Steve just rocks, his body moving them both. Bucky spreads his legs, tries to stabilize himself on his toes, and Steve hooks his arm around Bucky's waist to hold him up. 

Bucky can feel his soft cock dangling between his legs, swaying with their movement. There's something in his gut, a strange sort of swelling pressure, but he doesn't go looking for pleasure. He just lets himself move, lets himself be held. 

Steve's hips hitch, a little syncopation to the rhythm. Maybe he's almost done, and Bucky pushes down the urge to beg for it, to beg him to finish and pull out and give him back the loving distance between their bodies. He doesn't. He bites at his lips and his cheek and his tongue, his mouth swelling and throbbing with pain and blood, and he lets them rock. 

There's a soft grunt in Bucky's ear. Bucky tries not to listen—he doesn't want to remember it, he still hopes that one day—

When they shock him, just then, he's grateful for it. The pain pushes him out of his own head, clenches his muscles around Steve in a way that must feel good, because heat floods him. Steve comes in him, and it hurts too much for Bucky to memorize precisely what that feels like, what it sounds like. He wants that ignorance, desperately. 

Steve must be able to smell his flesh cooking, right under his nose. Feel the heat from the shock collar. He lets go of Bucky as soon as he can, and he fumbles, pulls Bucky's sweatpants up. He doesn't back away, though. He stops touching Bucky, but he uses his body to conceal him, hovering over him. Bucky would feel trapped, but he likes the idea that all they'll be able to see is Steve's broad back and the gleam of Steve's hair. Bucky can be invisible, underneath. 

Bucky pants, loud in the uneasy silence. 

"See, that wasn't so bad," he says, finally. 

Steve snorts out a wet sounding laugh, near to a sob. It's heartbreaking. This whole time, Steve has hated Bucky's penchant for gallows humor, but now he knows enough to laugh. 

Bucky can feel the inches between their bodies like a balm. He focuses on the smallest movements of breath, Steve giving off heat like a radiator. He doesn't want to think of the wetness between his legs. 

"It's gonna be okay," he says, to Steve, to himself, a pointless repetition. 

Steve doesn't acknowledge him. He doesn't move, not to close the space between them or increase it. Delay, Steve had signaled to him. Maybe someone is coming. 

Bucky doesn't think of it. He keeps his mind focused on the alleyway between their bodies and gets comfort from the separation. Water will find any small imperfection in rock and wear it down, make small cracks into large ones, into caverns. Touch intrudes, it digs in, it'll leave him hollow. 

But between the two of them, there was love sedimenting like silt, their history building layers, the distance becoming new, harder rock. He could draw strength from the solidity of the space between.


End file.
